Chapter 146 - Ilio part 13

The man who reminded me of my father—same curly beard, same great mane of fuzzy gray hair—was named Paba. He was a stocky man, late middle-age, with a comically round belly and skinny legs. He told Ilio he had been a slave of the Oombai for more than ten cycles of the seasons. He was taken captive with his two older brothers while fighting Oombai slavers who had raided their village. Both of his brothers were dead now, Ilio translated. One had died shortly after their capture, killed while trying to escape, and the other had died during the slave uprising following my battle with the Oombai Elders. Paba was the oldest of the escaped Neirie who still lived. He had assumed the mantle of leadership when Tapas and his group departed, though he shared the burden of that responsibility with some of the younger, more robust slave men and women, some of who hailed from other nearby tribes: the Grell, the Pruss.

Paba's pipe circled around the fire, and when it came to me, I puffed on it to be polite, though the redolent smoke could do little to enlighten my thoughts. The living black blood moves quickly to eliminate any drug-like or toxic substances I ingest.

Paba nodded in approval as I exhaled and passed the pipe on, his eyes reddening from the drug. He spoke to Ilio, gesturing with a thickly calloused finger, and Ilio translated his words to me.

"He says that he believes you are their god Thest, even though you deny it," Ilio said.

The old man spoke some more, then nodded for Ilio to relate what he'd said. The other men gathered around the fire listened to Paba with wide solemn eyes, then turned to see what I would reply.

"Why else, he says, would you have killed the Elders," Ilio translated. "Why protect the lowly Tanti, even feed them, if you are not one of the… tessares?" He frowned and asked the old man to explain what tessares meant.

The old man spoke for several minutes, gesturing to the ground and then to the sky and then waving his hand horizontally in the air.

Ilio listened, nodding his head, then explained, "Tessares means 'four corners' but it is also the word for their pantheon of gods. There are four, he says. Namames is Great Mother Earth, Tul is Great Father Sky, Vera is their goddess of water, and Thest is their god of wind." He listened some more and said, "Vera and Thest are the children of Mother Earth and Father Sky. They are brother and sister, and their children are the little spirits that inhabit the living realm… minor gods and goddesses."

Paba jabbered some more, then spread his arms out.

"But of all the gods and goddesses," Ilio said, "the Tessares are the most powerful."

The old man fell silent, waiting for my answer.

I smiled. To Ilio, I said, "Tell them that I am the one called Thest, but I do not know these other gods and goddesses he speaks of."

The Grell and Pruss gathered around the fire were unimpressed, but several of the Tanti men gasped. They whispered to one another indignantly. The old man, however, burst out laughing. He put his hand on his bouncing belly.

He spoke to Ilio when his laughter had tapered away, and Ilio translated: "He says he has never seen the gods either. Only the one who sits before him tonight."

The old man spoke and Ilio added, "Perhaps you forgot them when you came to the world to free your people... in the same manner the spirits of children forget their past lives when they are born."

I smiled and shrugged.

Nuhnhe, I might have said in a bygone era, but I doubted the old man would have understood the word, or appreciated the sentiment behind it. The word meant "who knows" in the tongue of the River People, but it was more than that. It meant who can really know anything, the world is a mystery and we are nothing.

One thing I did know, however. I knew it would be useless to argue with the old man. He seemed as unflappable as my father. Also, I didn't want to upset these people any more than I had to, or make us unwelcome when we arrived at their homeland. These were the descendants of the tribe that had given me birth. Their great ancestors were my great ancestors. I had lost them long ago, when the glaciers enveloped our valley home, but now we were reunited, as unlikely as that might seem. If they wanted to believe that I was some kind of guardian spirit, an incarnate deity, well… it wasn't very different than what I intended to be to them anyway.

Once again, I become Thest-u'un-Mann, I thought. The Ghost Who is a Man. The god who watches over the River People.

Only now I intended to live among them.

As we conversed, Ilio acting as our translator, the fragrance of cooking venison drifted to our group. The women had already butchered the stag and were preparing a meal over one of the other fires.

The aroma of the sizzling meat was a pleasant one. It stirred up old memories, though it no longer stirred my appetite. I found myself wishing that I was a mortal man again, flesh and blood like the men sitting around the fire with me. I wished that my belly could ache for the flesh of the deer, instead of the blood of my tribesmen, that the smoke of the pipe that circled the fire could still turn my thoughts to dripping honey, that a woman waited for me in my hut when I tired of my brothers' company, that she would welcome me into soft arms, into her warm womanhood, and see me off to fur-lined dreams, sated from food and talk and sex. The wishing was suddenly an ache in my soul that was much more painful than my hunger for their blood. That hunger I could control now… within reason. The ache for my lost humanity was suddenly unbearable. I wanted to leap to my feet. I wanted to flee from these people, find some dark and hidden place far away, and curl around the ache in my heart until it killed me or drove away my mind.

The men were discussing their long years of captivity, the cruelty and decadence of the Oombai. They told me of their prophecies, that the gods would free them from bondage and punish the wicked Oombai. And look, Paba said to the others, pointing to me with his pipe, you disparaged the gods of the Tanti, but who is scoffing now? Our God Thest has come, just as we prophesied. He has taken human form, delivered us from slavery, and punished those decadent Oombai, just as we told you would happen. He said this to the Grell and Pruss men sitting around the fire, and they peeked anxiously at me, wondering—no doubt—if the old man was speaking the truth. Was I the incarnate deity Thest, or just a blood drinker who had stolen the name of the Tanti god? They couldn't make up their minds.

One of the Pruss men was glowering at me. He was a stout fellow with a face like the knuckled root of an oak tree, his hair shorn to the scalp, as many of the Neirie had been shorn, their hair used for wigs or rope by the Oombai elite. He was dressed in only a ragged leather loincloth and his muscular body was crisscrossed with thick hypertrophic scars. In some places, scars overlapped other, older scars. He must have been a very defiant slave.

When our eyes met, he did not look away, but sat up straighter and said, "I do not think he is a god, Paba. He looks no different than any of the other T'sukuru that came to the land of the Oombai demanding their tribute of blood." He spoke in the Oombai tongue so that I would understand him, but also, I think, to disturb the other men.

"Kuhl!" his Pruss companion hissed, embarrassed and a little afraid.

The rebellious man crossed his arms and said, "Twice the Oombai sacrificed my woman to feed those damned T'sukuru leeches! First, Heda. Then, three summers later, they came and took my woman Gehena from the pens. Tore her from my very arms. She had just given birth to my son. They took the baby from her breast and bashed its head against the post. To punish me for fighting them." Kuhl glared at me with unrepentant hatred. "Do you expect gratitude from me, false god? You are just a blood drinker who grew angry with the Oombai when they killed your little… pet!" He gestured to Ilio as he said "pet".

Kuhl rose and stomped away. His back was a nest of raised pink scars.

"Forgive him, Thest, he was never one to hold his tongue," Paba pleaded in Oombai. "His Oombai master whipped him every day."

"There is nothing to forgive," I said. "The truth can never be offensive."

Paba looked confused and unhappy, as did the rest of the men gathered around the fire. They shifted around uncomfortably, embarrassed by Kuhl's ill-mannered outburst. Some of them, I could tell, were also secretly wondering who they should believe—the hot-tempered Kuhl or the old Tanti zealot. Was I T'sukuru or the Tanti god of wind? Perhaps I was both. Who's to say a god couldn't take the form of a blood drinker instead of a man?

I could see the thoughts running through their minds. I could see it in the way their eyes moved, the way their muscled ticked and bunched, the smell of their sweat.

Before our conversation resumed, I noticed several approaching women. As I turned my head to look, the other men around the fire mirrored my movement. Ilio half-rose, a look of excitement on his face as Priss drew near. The women lowered themselves to their knees. Most of them carried long wooden trays upon which steaming venison wrapped in leaves had been arranged. Ilio's female, however, was carrying two hollow gourds.

The scent of fresh blood wafted from the gourds.

The women spoke. Though I could not understand their words, they seemed very respectful of the men sitting with us. Not subservient. Just polite.

Hot venison was distributed around the campfire, while Priss bowed low to Ilio and held out the gourds. She smiled as he tried to make conversation with her, fanning her eyelashes, but she did not respond to his words, and then she rose and hurried away with the other women.

Ilio passed me one of the gourds. I didn't have to look in it to know what it contained. It was the blood of the stag. They had hung it from a rack or a tree and drained the rest of the blood from its body before butchering it.

The men around the fire had unwrapped their venison steaks, were carving into them hungrily with flint knifes. They stuffed the food into their mouths with nods of approval and much mmming and ahhhing.

I shrugged at Ilio, then tipped the gourd up and swallowed a mouthful of the blood. It was warm. The Tanti women had heated it over a fire.

I felt its heat slide down my throat, as rich and delicious as if I were sucking it straight from the vein. Pleasure rippled out from the core of my body as the blood suffused me. From the corner of my eye, I watched Ilio shiver as he followed my lead.

Smiling and nodding at Paba in appreciation, I thought: Yes, perhaps this will work.